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Boston-based Greenleaf Composting hopes to make mounds of money by taking the waste no one else wants, then selling it back to the public in the form of what Greenleaf's founder calls "black gold."

On a two-acre site behind the Franklin Park Zoo, the three-year-old company has been quietly transforming 10 tons of yard, food and animal waste each week into truckloads of nutrient-rich compost that sells for as much as $30 per cubic yard.

Greenleaf, the only composting company in the city of Boston, expects to pull in $110,000 in revenue this year, up from $59,000 in 1995.

However, with the retail market for fertilizer and soil enhancements in the United States estimated to be $2.2 billion by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Greenleaf projects revenue of $3 million in three to five years.

"We're just scratching the surface," said Bruce Fulford, Greenleaf's president and founder. "Only 5 percent of the organics generated in Boston that could be commercially collected and composted are."

That untapped source of organic waste--whether yard leaves or food waste from restaurants, hospitals and schools--is a potential gold mine for Greenleaf.

In Massachusetts, there are about 30 commercial composting businesses, but few take in as wide a variety of waste as Greenleaf, said Ann McGovern, environmental analyst at the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Composting is seen by the DEP as the best way for the state to reach its goal of recycling 46 percent of the state's waste stream by 2000. Today, 31 percent of the state's waste is recycled.

"Our initial strategy was to get residents to compost yard waste," McGovern said. "Now we want to move on to the next level, food."

Fulford, who grew up on a goat farm in Pennsylvania and who previously worked as a professional compost consultant, started his company with $350,000, mostly from a private investor and grants from the state Department of Food and Agriculture and the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.

The five-employee Greenleaf, which hopes to turn a profit next year, thinks its urban location and ability to take in everything from leaves to coffee grounds to pumpkins will give it a competitive edge.

Among other things, it plans to step up marketing efforts this winter, sell bagged compost to the public, build a greenhouse to sell seedlings grown with its compost, conduct tours at its site and possibly open a second, larger composting site in Melrose.

"By being here, we save companies having to truck their waste out of town. And people can buy compost made here, instead of trucked in from out of state," said Fulford.

Quincy-based Stop & Shop Cos. Inc., Harvard University and the Boston-based community outreach program Fair Foods all recently started bringing their food waste to the zoo site. Tufts University and several restaurants and hospitals have also expressed interest in saving money on waste disposal by separating out their food waste to be composted.

"Any way we can divert material from our trash stream, it saves us money and we want to do it," said Rob Gogan, waste manager of Harvard University's facilities maintenance.

Sending a ton of waste to a landfill costs Harvard $140, but sending it to Greenleaf costs $75, Gogan said. With the school sending about a ton of food waste to Greenleaf every day, the potential savings is tens of thousands of dollars.

True to its recycling nature, Greenleaf, like other composters, makes money twice: by charging landscaping businesses or institutions to take in waste, then selling the compost.

But they're not the only ones benefiting.

The Franklin Park Zoo saves $6,000 a year by composting its 15 to 20 tons a week of animal waste and bedding, rather than paying to have it hauled to a landfill, said Robert Chabot, the zoo's curator of horticulture and grounds.

In addition, instead of charging Greenleaf rent for two acres of land it uses, the nonprofit zoo gets a percentage of Greenleaf's tipping fees and sales of compost.

Greenleaf's composting operation is neatly contained along a half-mile stretch of road behind the Franklin Park Zoo. Greenleaf's offices are in Jamaica Plain.

There's little indication that the two-foot high dirt-and-leaf piles contain animal waste from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus' recent FleetCenter visit. In the mounds, there are also spent hops from local breweries and the remains of a Harvard University first-year student's dinner.

Fulford constantly refers to the "recipe" he uses to make different grades of compost, from the dense, coffee-ground-colored compost sold for $30 per cubic yard to the coarser, less nutrient-rich $15-per-cubic-yard variety.

Food waste is watered and mixed in layers with partially composted leaves and manure on a bed of woodchips. The temperature of the pile regularly exceeds 150 degrees for the two months or so it takes for decomposition to take place.

That naturally occurring heat is purifying, killing any bad bacteria in the waste, Fulford said. The compost must be regularly turned to aerate it and it eventually reduces in volume by about half.

For Fulford, working with the earth is a natural after having grown up on a goat farm. After getting thrown out of high school for an "attitude problem," Fulford traveled the world to study alternative agricultural practices. He spent time cutting bamboo in Greece, studying soil erosion in Italy and North Africa and doing organic farming in Maine.

"I didn't go to college, but from working with scientists and researchers I learned about soil health and what a big issue it was," Fulford said.

After spending 15 years as a professional compost consultant in New England, Fulford said he realized he could make more by running his own business.

"To me, there was clearly a business opportunity in Boston in that there was a great deal of organic materials not being recovered," Fulford said. "There's also an increasingly sophisticated market in Boston and a high concentration of environmental-savvy potential customers."

Not content with his recycling efforts so far, Fulford is completing work on an enclosed composting facility on the zoo site. It will capture the heat generated by the composting process to heat a greenhouse, and contain the smell of the most odorous composting materials.

Odor is often the big objection to composting businesses, especially those located in urban areas. But Greenleaf has the advantage of being between the Franklin Zoo and a golf course, with penned coyotes as the nearest neighbors.

McGovern emphasized that when a compost operation is well managed, it doesn't have an objectionable smell. Fulford keeps the smelliest material under plastic cover and turns it in small batches or late at night.

At Greenleaf's site, the compost smells earthy but not offensive.

Greenleaf is negotiating to take over a 10-acre site in Melrose to expand its composting operations, and expects to start educational tours of its Boston site next year.

For Fulford, Greenleaf gives him the chance to fulfill his social and environmental goals, while also keeping his hands in the dirt.

"I like having callouses," he said. "This lets me be on the loader part of the time and in the office on the computer part of the time."

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